


The Stars We Were Always Meant To Be

by TheLadySif_1



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/F, F/M, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 06:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19693498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadySif_1/pseuds/TheLadySif_1
Summary: 1445.23.6678Dec. 23.1996Somewhere in the H II region. She thinks.Carol had counted the days, diligently. Every single one. As each day passed, the guilt grew in her stomach, blossoming across her chest and down into her limbs.“I’ll be back before you know it.”She was being made into a liar and she hated it.-----Covering events between 1995 and 2023. A story in three parts.





	The Stars We Were Always Meant To Be

**Author's Note:**

> I've promised a few people I would get this written up and posted on the site and here. it. is. 
> 
> For now here is Part 1, which covers a few moments between 1995 and 2005. As we move on I'll adopt a more traditional prose/style, but I figured the small snapshot style will be a better fit to start with. I hope. 
> 
> The tags will probably change as we move forward, but for now it's pretty standard stuff across the board. 
> 
> (Aiming for a good 15,000 words total and we're sitting at 8,500 right now). Will look to have this entire story done and dusted by September. 
> 
> Note: I will be tweaking everything as I go along. I have a tendency to tweak relentlessly.

**Part 1. The First Few Years**

Space was _big_. She’d said that to Talos in the first couple of days, much to his amusement.  
****

She’d travelled a lot with Starforce, of course, but this was different. Different in every way.

Now, Carol spent her time soaring through the cosmos, feeling stardust at her fingertips, propelled through her own power at speeds she could only dream of bound and chained as she had been with the Kree.

Things which had caused her pain with her captors now gave her strength, seeped into her bones, reinvigorated her limbs. And still she flew onwards, passed burning supernovas (the pulsing heat felt like cooling fingers across her skin, awakening every cell in her body), passed planets with dusty atmospheres, passed everything that the universe had to offer. 

She saw more than she had ever seen in her life, and still she flew onwards, driven by a need to prove that she was worth something, that she could be, fundamentally, _good._

Driven by a need to wipe her record clean, or at least, _even out_ everything she had done under the Kree’s control. Then there was the other part of her, small but growing, that curses that very thought and wished she’d just been a bit more selfish.

——

“This is excessive.” Talos didn’t look particularly impressed with her. Hadn't been for several light years.

“What?” She said innocently enough, failing to avert his gaze.

“You need to rest.” He punctuated each word with a light tap of a knuckle against the ship’s controls. 

Carol knew he was right, of course, she couldn’t keep up the relentless pace forever - a fact that she loathed to admit. She’d tried sleep-flying, just closing one eye at a time, trying to capture a few precious seconds. 

She was still finding asteroid dust in the creases of her suit. 

What made things worse was that her body was fine. It seemed to want to keep going and prove its new strength. No. This was a tiredness that clouded her mind, and dripped down into everything else. An exhaustion that made her thoughts jumbled. 

“Carol”. 

She blinked once, twice. Tried to get the room to focus around her. “Yeah?”

“You need to sleep.” 

Veranke appeared from nowhere - _had she been there the whole time?_ \- and tugged at her arm. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room”

_Room?_

“You think we would make you sleep outside the ship?” Talos answered the question she hadn’t asked. Or had she? 

Veranke practically dragged her leaden body through the corridors of the imperial cruiser, into one of the large quarters next to the mess hall. The room was sparse, but she knew it was one of the largest they had. A bunk had been pushed against the far side, alongside a few homely additions - courtesy of Monica and Maria, of course. 

She managed a lazy smile before falling face first into the pillow, not bothering to shrug out of her jacket.

———-

** 1445.23.6678 **

** Dec. 23.1996 **

Somewhere in the H II region. _She thinks._

Carol had counted the days, diligently. Every single one. As each day passed, the guilt grew in her stomach, blossoming across her chest, down into her limbs. 

**“I’ll be back before you know it.”**

She was being made into a liar, and she hated it.

———

The memories came and went. Some with picture-perfect clarity, others murky, hard to grasp, slipping out of her hands like water.

Many were happy memories of her time spent with Monica and Maria. She remembered laughter at Christmas, tickling Monica until she begged her to stop through high-pitched giggles. Graduating at the top of her class. Late night karaoke. Driving her mustang as fast as it would go. Soaring through the clouds, watching the sunlight glisten across the controls of her cockpit and feel, for a time, utterly at peace.

Others crept at the back of her brain like a threat, stepping forward to reveal themselves, before slinking back into the shadows. Sometimes they would explode with a _ferocity_ , a maliciousness that had her hold her head in her hands. Crippling her. 

Sometimes she would almost laugh at the irony. To be so strong to punch asteroids into dust, but so weak to be rendered useless by nothing but a distant memory.

Worst of all were the remnants of the Kree interference, poisoning, twisting, torturing whatever it could reach. She had asked Talos to help her differentiate between what was real - those sacred fragments of truth - and what was not. To help her recreate something that could almost resemble her life. Both the good and the bad. Especially the bad. 

——

“Go on..” Talos said tentatively, watching as her eyes grew darker, more serious. 

“My dad drank a lot, got angry. Pushed my mom around. He would get into fist fights, come home drunk, knock things over. Shout. Wake me and Junior up. I remember him yelling in my face, grabbing me by the shoulders-” She winced then, ever so slightly - so slight that Talos wasn’t sure he had seen it at all. 

A pause. “Real?”

Talos didn’t move a muscle. “Yes.”

———-

Carol wondered how, at times, she would struggle to smile - to feel anything at all- and at others felt like she could explode with the force of her rage. Her love. Her grief. Her despair. All the while there was _his_ voice echoing in her head. “ _Control it”_. 

His teachings would whirl around her head in mockery, taunting her. 

“A true Kree is a solider, a warrior, first. Emotions are dangerous and can get you, and worse your fellow Kree, killed.”

She remembered how she had bowed her head, accepting the teachings, oblivious at their true nature. _Control your emotions. Don’t use your powers. Forget who you were. You’re ours now._

_“You’re stronger than you think”._

Her fist went through the wall of her room like it was paper.

Later, she found a framed image of Monica and Maria in its place.

————-

She hadn’t meant to blast a hole in the ceiling of central command, activating every alarm on the cruiser and sending everyone into a frenzied panic. But, then she’d also not expected a flerken to appear in a cloud of slime and goo and fall (almost gracefully in hindsight) into her lap. 

“Goose?!” 

The ginger cat nestled into her legs and curled up, pawing at the leather for a moment before settling. 

The Skrulls looked at the woman covered in green slime for a moment, then back at the ball of fur, back again. 

“Flerken.” Carol explained simply, which seemed to be enough. “I can fix that.” She pointed at the hole, made a small smile. 

————

“I’ve got a weird one.”

“Weird how?” His voice clipped in her ear, and she could almost hear it above and behind her, protected by inches of hardened hull. 

Carol anchored her foot on one of the cruiser’s front-facing turrets, crossed her arms. “Because it _feels_ real. The others feel wrong. I can _feel_ the Kree in them. The way they messed with things. They did a good job, but only when you’re not actively looking for it. Then it’s almost…. _lazy_.” She took pleasure in finding Kree weakness. It belonged in a new part of her brain that was quickly documenting every way that the Kree were _far_ from superior. Beatable. Weak. 

“What's weird?” Talos nudged again. 

“It’s about my mom. I’m under the kitchen table, playing with some toys-“ it was a model plane, a red stripe down the fuselage. “-my dad storms in. He’s in her face. He’s shouting, then she puts a hand on his arm and he’s in pain. Backing down. Free arm raised. That’s it. There’s nothing after that. It’s just a flash.”

She flicked a piece of space rock away from her face.“So, what d’ya think? Real? Not real?”  


“No idea.”He answered honestly.

Carol pushed off from the ship’s surface, letting the momentum carry her. “It feels real, but I have no idea what it means. If it even means _anything_ at all.” 

Worse still was the thought that the Kree wanted her to remember this. 

_But why?_

————

“It’s just all _so_ appealing.” Carol didn’t try to hide the soft whine in her voice as she mentally prepared herself for the upcoming meal. They were deep into their rations and about 2 weeks out from the next outpost. True, the small Skrull colony they picked up a few weeks ago had packed some additional local Xorrian produce, but they’d quickly burned through it. Oh, how she missed the Habarathi soup. 

As it was, breakfast had been comprised of the Kree paste she’d tolerated on Hala - a staple that provided the perfect balance of nutrients any Kree citizen would need to start the day. The Kree were, decidedly, not known for their culinary prowess. 

She’d understandably skipped lunch, but Veranke had positively insisted she eat something for dinner so..here she was. Standing in the mess hall. Preparing for more paste.

Soren smiled, “Go on.”

“Got to be a cheeseburger. I would kill for a cheeseburger right now. Or a Lobster roll from Mickie’s. Roast beef sandwiches. Or my mom’s Key Lime Pie with a ton of whipped cream. Just anything that isn’t from some sort of tube, please.” 

She gave a little flourish of her finger as she pressed the button on the console and was rewarded with a completely not appetising pile of paste. “Ah, I see you’ve chosen your finest paste. Yum”.

The Skrull at her side laughed, and placed her tray underneath the dispenser. “Not this time.”

“One day I’ll press that button and it won’t be paste.You’ll see.”

————

Carol Danvers was speechless. She didn’t enjoy the feeling.

She nervously plucked at the console in front of her, making sure it was properly calibrated, even though she’d already checked it three times already. 

It would take a year or two to be picked up by SHIELD’s equipment - hopefully - where Fury had promised to pass it on. She stared into the projector, wandering _what on earth_ she could say that wouldn’t sound cavalier. That would say everything she needed to, and everything she never could.

She started to record, trying to stop the slight quiver in her lower lip. 

It was June 16th 1999. 

——-

“How many years?”She couldn’t stop the words from forming an edge, trimmed with bitterness. _Blame_. 

“Three. If we’re quick.” That seemed like a joke. She was in no mood to laugh.

_Three years…._

**“I’ll be back before you know it.”**

The black hole was indescribable in every way. Even from this distance, she could feel the strength of its pull, a magnetism to come closer. _Closer._ A yawning blackness that seemed utterly irresistible and they were going to cross it. 

It was decided early on that they would need to. If the Kree were still following them, which she doubted anyway, they had absolutely no way to chase them past the hole. It was, as Talos had emphasised, the only way to find them a home. To make them safe.

Somehow. The plan seemed foolish face to face with the goliath. _Impossible_ , she had thought. Believing herself to no longer know the meaning of the word.

“We need you Carol.” How was it that Talos, who seemed to always know what she was thinking, was managing to say all of the wrong things _now_?

She swallowed the distaste in her mouth and silenced the thoughts in her mind: _She had to do this. There was no other way._

_———_

“I’m in position.”

She flexed her energy field in preparation, enjoying the ebb and flow of the light as it reached into the cosmos. 

“Attaching now.” It wasn’t Talos’s voice, but Dalx, the Head of Engineering. 

She felt the beam latch onto her torso, anchoring her to the ship. Their plan was a simple one that, with each passing moment, was starting to feel more and more moronic. 

“You OK out there, Danvers?”

“Just preparing to fly across a black hole dragging an Imperial Cruiser behind me, no big deal. You got any plans for later?”

“Hoping not to be a black hole’s lunch, mostly.” Dalx almost managed a laugh. _Almost._ “We’re ready when you are.”

“Great.” She muttered, and heard a soft, forced chuckle from the other side of the comms. 

The power came naturally to her - like always -like a best friend, familiar and warm. She’d always been confident with it, pleased that she had never discovered her limits. She was sure she was about to and she didn’t exactly relish the idea. 

She launched forwards. 

And immediately regretted ever setting foot in space. This was it.

Then another thought, colliding to the front: she was merely human, and she had just taunted a god. She believed she could overcome it. How foolish she was... had been.

There wouldn’t be anything left to bury, but if word ever - impossibly- got back to Earth she wanted the gravestone to read: _Here doesn't lie Carol Danvers. Sucked into a black hole. Idiot._

Only sheer determination (and weirdly, humiliation) stopped her from being sucked in immediately. Black hole was one of the worst ways to go. 

It took every ounce of her considerable power, everything she had, to pull them free. For seconds that felt like eternities there was the overwhelming thought of death. That she would fail and everything she had done so far would be for nought. That the years she’d spent away from Earth had been for nothing. Somehow _-_ despite the emptiness of her body and the headache behind her eyes- she continued on, finding new wells of power even as she greedily depleted others.

Then, with a suddenness that surprised her, she felt nothing at all but a weightlessness, and a soft voice in her ear.

“Carol…”

_Surely the old Skrull wasn’t worried about her?_

“Carol….”

_Something wasn’t right._

“What?” She suddenly felt nauseous. 

Something had gone terribly wrong. Could feel it in the silence. The hesitation in his words. 

A jolt of impatience rocketed through her body. 

From the command deck, it appeared as though Danvers had disappeared in a flash of light. Her disappearance was followed immediately by a deep, thrumming **BOOOM,** as the ship rocked violently from the force of…whatever had just happened. 

A second later, Carol rammed through the doors on the deck and paced towards them, an inferno of cascading golden energy that caused everyone to flinch away and shield their eyes. 

“ _Tell me._ ” 

She was the mirror of the confused Kree girl on the lawn of the Rambeau house. All balled fists, and gritted teeth. The comparison was not a pleasant one for Talos. 

“It wasn’t three yea-“ 

She approached the console. All rage, confusion, and despair. Her movements felt sluggish and slowed down. Her world tilted on its axis.

It had taken them six years. 

It had been ten years since she’d left Earth. 

Her own words echoed in her ears.“ _I’ll be back before you know it._ ” 

Carol heard Talos approach, felt his hand move towards her in the space between them. Turned around, letting _everything_ she was thinking show on her face.  


How it wasn’t _fair_ that she’d done everything right and was rewarded with failure and disappointment. How she had wished she had stayed behind. How she hadn’t played the hero. How there was a part of her that regretted everything, as petulant and childish - and yes, _wrong_ \- as it was to think that. 

He stepped away, his hand dropping like a dead weight. He knew better than to apologise. Knew no words could reach her. 

Then there was a heavy, suffocating silence, with neither party seeming eager to shatter it. 

Then….

“Let’s find you a home.” 

Of the hundreds of Skrulls now on the ship, none tried to stop her as she stormed across the deck, through corridors, and out into the pitch black void of the universe. 

As she flew, she could only see the sadness on their faces. The pity. 

She hated it.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for any typos - I'll be re-reading this over imminently.
> 
> See ya for Part 2! Which, I promise, reads more like an actual story. Also, Part 1 and Part 2 were originally Part 1, but I figured splitting it into three parts wouldn't hurt.  
> \-----
> 
> Sneak Peek:
> 
> It feels like an eternity later that she picks herself off the floor and launches into the sky, not caring for a second about the shockwave she leaves behind, or the way her body tears through the atmosphere. 
> 
> Desperation makes her fly faster than she ever has before, glowing iridescent against the dull blankness of space. She used to think the universe was a beautiful thing. The stars worthy of wonder. She would stop and simply hover in the middle of the vast emptiness, just drinking it all in. But not today, she thinks. Maybe never again. 
> 
> Even at her relentless speed, it takes days to reach Earth and all the time, her thoughts are with Maria and Monica. Once or twice she chokes back a small sob, before the harsh voice in her head bites “No. You’re stronger than this. Control it.” Again and again.


End file.
